Work Text:
George Karim is, honestly, a little disappointed when Flo takes the bone glass out of her coat pocket and hands it to him outside DEPRAC. “You’re not coming in?” he asks, unable to keep it out of his voice. He knows the plan is for him to bring the mirror to the department to be destroyed, but he had had it in his head that she would be with him when he did. He’s not convinced he can do this without her support.
“Not sure they’d let me out again,” responds Flo Bones. Glancing at the building, her bike securely leaned against her hip, she seems steady and unyielding. George doubts they could keep her there if they tried. She softens a little when he doesn’t move his wide-eyed, bespectacled gaze away from her. “Come on,” she says encouragingly, almost with a fondness. “You’re strong enough. You’re literally at the door.”
George turns his head briefly, looking in the same direction that Flo had seconds before. “Yeah,” he agrees, but his heart isn’t in it. Still, he takes the parcel from her proffering hands and hugs it to his body. He gives in to the urge to turn and walk away with it before she can take it back-- this is the first time he’s held it, and it feels right. Surely he can be content with just holding it for the few steps it’ll take him to deliver it into the waiting arms of DEPRAC’s furnaces. He won’t look at it.
He wants to look at it.
“I did actually have another idea, though.” Flo’s voice brings him back to reality and he stops, turning back around. “What if we take Matilda out to the Medway? Forget this lot,” she says with a nod to the DEPRAC building. “We’ll just drop it in where it’s so deep, no one will ever find it. And afterwards, maybe we could check out this little island.” Her eyes are hopeful, and wonder has crept into her voice. “There’s loads of herons nesting on it.”
One blink. Two blinks. Three blinks. George is so, so conflicted about this, and it shows on his face. He does want to see the island with Flo, but--
“Or whatever!” she adds, taking a stab at being nonchalant. George is only able to recognize it as pretence because he does it so much himself. “You’re here already, so…”
He really does want to go with her to see the herons on the island. He wants it nearly as badly as he’s wanted another glimpse of the wretched mirror these past few days, it’s just… the plan. He tries to tell her as much but only manages the last few words.
Flo nods, unable to keep the shaky hurt out of her voice when she says “Yeah.” She turns around, wheeling her bike with her. “Cool,” she says, with a cool tone to match. “Seeya!”
And she’s gone.
George watches her go for a few seconds and then, hyperaware of the bone glass pressed to his puffer-jacketed torso, turns to bring it inside. He can do this. He can do this! He makes it up the stairs outside, no problem. He makes it under the awning without any trouble. He makes it through the door and doubles back without giving it a chance to close behind him. Barely ten seconds have passed.
But it isn’t covetousness for the mirror that influences him to leave DEPRAC behind so quickly. It’s Flo. He really, really does want to see the island with her. She had seemed so excited about it, and the herons. If he wasn’t so caught up in the bone glass, or so rigid about the plan… he feels terrible. But she’s still visible going down the street, so he calls her name in a bid to win her attention before she bikes completely out of sight. “Flo? …Flo! You, me, and herons! Let’s do it!”
It only takes a second or two for Flo to slow to a stop, and only a second or two more for George’s eyebrows to stop knitting themselves together. He’s so relieved he could float right off the ground. She hasn’t turned around, but she’s waiting. For him. The bone glass parcel still safely clutched to his chest, he all but sprints to catch up with her.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight a moment ago,” he pants when he gets there. It’s not entirely his fault, he thinks; it always takes him a little while to adjust to changes in pre-established plans, but he figures an apology might go down well with Flo. “I like the island plan much better.”
The brightness is back in her voice, and she gives him a grin. “Great. First things first, though, I’ll be having that back,” she says, holding out her hand expectantly. “For both our own goods.” George knows he ought to hand over the mirror, but something whispers to him that he should hang on to it himself, that he deserves to keep it. In his moment’s hesitation, Flo runs out of patience. She grabs the parcel and wrests it from his grasp, meeting little enough resistance that a stern glance is all it takes for him to release it into her hands. “Thanks.” Another smile tugs at the ends of her lips as she looks the bone glass over to make sure it’s still properly covered, keeping any psychic noise emanating from it at a minimum.
It’s a short walk back to Matilda from there in companionable silence. George is glad for the lack of small talk; he’s never quite managed to get the hang of it. Chatting for the sake of chatting has never been his style. It always feels forced. He prefers only to engage when he’s really interested in a topic, or actually wants the answer to a question, like this one:
“What happened to you being double-booked? The tip-off in Greenwich?” This earns him yet another grin. Flo seems to smile at him a lot.
“No point to that now. We’ve got heronsto see, Georgie. Besides, someone else’ll probably have got to it by now, anyhow.”
Flo also seems to change her mind a lot.
She moves to the helm of Matilda, turning her key in the boat’s ignition, and gestures for George to join her by the wheel before disembarking. There’s still a mutual silence, punctuated only by the wind in George’s ears and the rumbling of the engine. If he listens closely, he can hear the river lapping against the side of the boat. Flo breaks the silence a moment later. “Is Locky expecting you home anytime soon? I only ask ‘cause the ride out to the Medway is a little over an hour.”
He considers this. “Doubt it.” He figures Lockwood and Lucy will be glad to have some time alone at Portland Row after their escape from Winkman’s auction, what with the looks they’ve been exchanging the past several weeks. He’s definitely some variety of third wheel, and he doubts it’s for a tricycle. To go home and interrupt God knows what, with the tension as thick as it has been the past few hours? No, he can stay out a few more. “He’ll have… somewhere else to direct his attention.”
Flo laughs. “I know what you mean. Always looking ‘somewhere else’, that one. I’m glad he’s managed to keep you on as long as he has,” she says, and it seems like she genuinely means it. George can feel the tips of his ears go red as he mutters the thanks he’s pretty sure are appropriate here. He asks how long Flo has known Lockwood.
“Oh, ages. Yeah, me and Locky go way back. Has he ever told you about the time I beat him in a fencing competition?”
"No?!" ‘Incredulous’ can’t begin to describe the way George feels in reaction to that information. If his jaw could unhinge far enough to reach the floor, it would be there. Then again, after the initial shock, he finds that he can believe it. If anyone can make mincemeat out of Lockwood, it’s Flo Bones. “No, it’s… never come up.”
Now it’s George’s turn to laugh drily. He likes talking to Flo, he realises. Actually enjoys it. So when he answers her questions about work, it isn’t forced at all. Plus, she seems to appreciate all his anecdotes. He tells her about the wraith hunting job that went wrong a few days back and she laughs in all the right places (it is pretty funny, now that there’s a healthy barrier of time between him and the incident). His accounts of experiments with the skull are met with oohs and ack!s. She regards his story about figuring out it was Bickerstaff in the unmarked grave with genuine interest. And in return, she tells him about some of the relics she’s found over the years. There’s the bones belonging to one of London’s only known female serial killers, and the wallet of someone who had once been very important, and how could she forget the gorgeous opal necklace that had earned her her biggest sum to date? It had had a powerful impact on the people who beheld it, much like…
“That bone glass, Georgie,” Flo says contemplatively. “Do you think you’ll ever stop pining for it if you know it’s out of your reach? You’re strong about resisting it, but it’s really powerful shit. Will dropping it in the river be enough, or does it have to be destroyed?”
“I’m sure there’s some sort of experiment I could design to find out.” Truthfully, Flo’s company has been enough to distract George from the mirror’s pull almost entirely this last little while. He wonders whether this has any implications and decides it’s something to ponder later.
“There’s an idea. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Let’s play truth or dare,” Flo says, suddenly excited and brighter than a ghost lamp. George privately wonders how feasible the second half of that game will be on a moving boat, but he knows he’ll always pick truth anyway. And it’s not as though he’s about to say no. As awkward as he knows truth or dare has the potential to be, he trusts Flo.
He nods. “Okay. Truth or dare?”
Flo rewards him with another one of her dazzling grins. “Dare.”
“Oh. I… I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Okay. I dare you to… wear one of those for the rest of the evening,” he says, pointing at the bright orange life jackets stowed on the side of the boat.
Flo makes a hm noise. “Pretty tame, Georgie. You can do better next time.” Next time? He has to come up with more of these? She dons a life jacket and lights up the boat with yet another smile. “Now we match!” she says, gesturing to his puffer jacket with its orange lining. They share a laugh. “Your turn. Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” George says with certainty.
“Ooh, scaredy-cat,” Flo teases. “Only kidding,” she says, noticing that his eyebrows have knitted themselves together and his bottom lip has drawn itself up the slightest bit. “I’ll go easy. How’d you meet Locky?” George is a little sheepish, as it involves his being fired from Fittes, but he tells the story and Flo seems to almost admire him for it. He tries to turn the question back around, but he’s met with a tsk and an “ah-ah-ah, Georgie. You haven’t asked me truth or dare.”
“Truth or dare?”
“Dare, of course.” Flo wiggles a little, seeming very pleased with herself.
George shakes his head and smiles in spite of himself. “Okay. Okaaaay. I dare you to…”
The rest of the journey passes like this, with George struggling to come up with additional dares while Flo learns more and more about him. He tells her about his engineer siblings and his perfectly unremarkable London upbringing, about how he didn’t speak much as a child (Flo has difficulty believing this, quipping that she can’t see him ever passing up any opportunity to make a wisecrack). He tells her about his perennial obsession with the history of the Problem. She absorbs it all eagerly.
It doesn’t feel like an hour has passed when they reach the River Medway; if George were told that it’s only been a meagre ten minutes since he and Flo had disembarked, he’d believe it. They’ve lapsed back into a comfortable silence. Well-- comfort being a relative thing. In fact, he’s increasingly uncomfortable, but his discomfort has nothing to do with the silence and everything to do with the parcel he knows to be tucked inside his companion’s coat. His hand twitches once, twice, three times, as if it’s thinking thoughts of its own about retrieving the mirror. Flo won’t let it happen, so she’ll have to be overpowered. But George would never hurt her. He wouldn’t! He can say it with… okay, he can’t say it with confidence. The thought frightens him.
But it doesn’t matter. He needs to look into that mirror again. Needs to. It’s all he cares about, all he can think about, now, and he’ll do whatever it takes to--
Flo takes notice of his subdued expression and interrupts his spiral of thought. “Whatcha thinkin’ about, Georgie? It wouldn’t be that bone glass, would it?” George can only stare as she continues. “Because I tossed that thing overboard when you were busy looking all seasick after daring me to have Matilda do a very slow 360. Not your best move, by the way. You’re more creative than that. Doesn’t show from your dares, though.”
George hones in on her words and they echo in his head. I tossed that thing overboard. I tossed that thing overboard. I tossed that thing overboard. The bone glass is gone. But it hasn’t been too long since she dropped it, surely if he went searching he could find it, surely it can’t be gone forever…
He’s halfway over the boat’s rail before Flo catches him and keeps him from diving over the edge. Her grip on his arm is the same way he had thought she looked earlier, outside of DEPRAC-- steady and unyielding. “I need to see more,” he gasps. “Let me go!”
“What, and let you drown yourself looking for it? Not my ideal way to end the night. Good thing I changed my mind at the last minute before throwing it in,” she says smoothly, opening her coat just enough for George to see that she still had the mirror. “Just testing the waters.” It’s almost exactly the sort of little experiment he would have come up with himself, and he feels a prickle of… what is this? It’s something warm, but that’s all he can pinpoint about it.
He doesn’t have time to figure it out before Flo continues. “Here’s what we’ll do. We keep you distracted for the rest of the evening, and then we head back to DEPRAC and you dispose of this thing. For real. No tricks, only furnaces. Then it won’t have a hold on you, or if it does you can fight it easier knowing it’s destroyed. Sound good? Good.” She doesn’t wait for him to agree.
Thank God for Flo’s capricious nature, George thinks. Without it, he’s sure he’d be toast by now, whether or not that involves the bone glass. He’ll have to make sure to bring her a big bag of licorice as thanks the next time he sees her. Hell, he’s inclined to bring her a bag of licorice every time he sees her from here on out for no particular reason other than he thinks she’s neat.
Flo’s island is near now, and he thinks it’s pretty neat too. He can just barely pick out the pale shapes of nesting herons by the shore. There are several-- no, more than several of them. Flo had had it right when she said loads. She drops an anchor once they’re close enough, and draws a finger to her lips. “We’ll have to be quiet so we don’t disturb them,” she says in a hushed tone, “but we can still talk. D’you want to hear what I know about herons?” George nods, never able to resist new information, as the pair set foot on the island.
“Okay. A group of them is called a siege. Fits, right? These guys are all around,” she says, beaming. “And they’re nesting all together in a rookery. Normally they nest on the ground by water, or in trees. Look up,” she instructs, and George complies. He gasps as soon as he does. There are at least twice as many herons as he had initially thought, now that he’s counting the ones nesting up in the trees. It’s incredible.
“The ones we have here are called grey herons. They’re a lot like the Great Blue ones, except a little smaller. Wingspans still get up to about two metres, though.”
“I read somewhere that the scientific name for herons was… oh, now I can’t remember. It sounded a little like Deirdre, I thought,” George contributes. He loves this. Flo talks about herons the way he talks about the history of the Problem. It’s easy to understand how she can be so enraptured by the topic. He imagines that her islands are to her what his archives are to him.
“Ardeidae!” Flo’s eyes, if possible, shine even more than they have been. “That’s the family name. It also covers egrets and bitterns. I don’t know much about bitterns, but egrets are a lot like herons. Just meaner. Funny, since they’re supposed to be symbols of peace. Herons are, too, but then that makes more sense.”
George can see why. There’s a sense of calm that seems to have extended itself across the entirety of the little island. There are so many herons, all just… sleeping near each other. He’s never been able to see himself living in this kind of peace, but in this moment, he can’t help but feel that it would be nice. It’s all he can do to stare quietly in wonder. Flo, easily distracted as she is, seems utterly absorbed as well.
He’d like to hold her hand, he thinks. Usually, he isn’t a fan of anything he deems ‘touchy-feely’. It’s a foreign desire to him, strange and new much like everything else he’s feeling tonight. But it’s there all the same. It must be the influence of the island. “Hey, Flo?” he whispers.
“Yeah, Georgie?”
“Truth or dare?”
He knows which one she’ll pick, and she knows that he knows. She raises an eyebrow. “Dare.”
“Dare you to come sit over here.” With me. Tamer than hand-holding-- Flo had been right about his daring tendencies-- but proximity nonetheless. And proximity will do very nicely. As she moves to plop down next to him on the muddy bank, her smile is of a softer variety than any he’s seen tonight. The moment encircles him like a closed membrane, allowing nothing in and nothing out. Anything else George may have been thinking about tonight has been momentarily forgotten while his brain places full priority on the relic-girl sitting just to his right and her marvellous island of herons all around him.
He knows that in what feels like a few fleeting minutes he’ll have to turn around and head back where he came from, but he won’t really have left. Part of him will be here on this island with Flo for the rest of the night. Just the two of them and herons.